Heaven Sent (12 page)

Since Miss Prophet had been born and
reared in Santa Angelica; she knew Aubrey had heard her detailing
their different personalities in a humorous way, but one that left
no doubt as to what she expected Becky to do in the way of
discipline and paying attention. Aubrey thought she’d done very
well in this regard, although he didn’t tell her so.

He presumed the two teachers split
their teaching responsibilities by age or sex or something. He
hadn’t looked into the matter personally, but had left everything
to Miss Prophet who, unlike Aubrey himself, knew all about getting
little girls prepared to face the challenges of
education.

Miss Prophet had also sewn five
dresses for Becky to wear to school. Aubrey hated to acknowledge
her talents in the direction of fashion, but he’d done so,
grudgingly, when Becky, her face radiant, had turned in front of
him, showing off her new wardrobe one dress at a time. The dresses
were quite fetching, and he’d gone so far as to thank Miss Prophet,
who’d responded coolly and inclined her head a quarter of an
inch.

Upon further acquaintance, Monster had
not stopped biting Aubrey, but attacked his feet whenever he had
the chance.

As Aubrey went to his office on this
chilly September morning, he had to leap out of the way of the
pugnacious cat, who seemed to enjoy lurking under furniture and
hiding behind corners and leaping on him unawares. The cat seemed
to consider attacking Aubrey’s feet one of the great pleasures in
life. Aubrey disagreed, although he hadn’t gone so far as to kick
the beast yet.

He made it to his office
after fending off the cat, removed his coat and threw it on the
sofa, and seated himself behind his desk. As he did so, he growled,
“
Mister
Monster,
my hind foot. The animal ought to be dispatched as a menace to
society. It’s a menace to my society, however much Miss Prophet
likes to say he’s a benevolent creature.”

He didn’t mean it. If Monster were to
go away, Becky would be grief stricken. Aubrey didn’t think he
could bear to see her unhappy again, although he wasn’t altogether
sure he approved of the renewal of her spirits having been
accomplished by Miss Callida Prophet and an insane cat. He, as
Becky’s father, ought to have been the one who’d comforted her and
soothed her grief.

With a sigh, Aubrey burdened his
conscience with the same reproach that had bothered him for months
and months: He’d failed his daughter. He, who should have showered
her with tenderness and understanding during her time of great
loss, had withdrawn into his own selfish melancholy and ignored
her.

The unfortunate truth was, though,
that he hadn’t a clue bow to deal with children. Not even Becky,
whom he loved beyond anything.

However, Miss Prophet, for all her
faults—and she had hundreds of them—had eased his mind, if not his
conscience, a good deal when it came to Becky. He applauded himself
for having had the forethought to hire a nanny. Miss Prophet might
be the bane of his own existence, but she’d been Becky’s salvation.
In truth, when he didn’t want to kill her with his bare hands, he
appreciated her.

For several days now, it had been
difficult for Aubrey to remove his thoughts from Miss Prophet and
Becky and concentrate on his Oriental imports business, but he
always managed to do it. He might know nothing about children, but
he knew his business inside and out, and he aimed to do that right,
if nothing else. Therefore, this morning, as every morning, he
cleared his mind of irrelevancies—if his child could be considered
an irrelevancy—and concentrated on Chinese vases, Persian rugs,
Siamese wall hangings, and Indian teas.

He’d been working at his desk for an
hour or two when Figgins knocked at the door and entered. Aubrey
expected the butler would announce the arrival of Mark Henderson,
his secretary from the San Francisco office, who made the trip to
Santa Angelica every week in order to go over business
affairs.

Aubrey was surprised, therefore, to
see that Figgins was alone. He also bore a silver tray with a
single white calling card in its center.

With a sigh—Aubrey didn’t really go in
for all this formality, but he didn’t have the heart to tell
Figgins to forgo it since he took such obvious pleasure in these
traditions, he took the card and lifted it to his line of
vision.

He goggled. “Good God!”

“
Sir?”

Aubrey realized he’d uttered an
improper exclamation, and that Figgins undoubtedly deplored such a
lapse. “I beg your pardon, Figgins. But . . . well . . . this card.
Is she here? Now? Right this minute?”

“
Yes, sir. She’s awaiting
your pleasure in the drawing room.” Not a flicker of emotion showed
on Figgins’s face.

The same, Aubrey was sure, could not
be said of his own face. “Mrs. Bridgewater? Herself? Here?”
Pleasure, be damned. She could await that forever and her wait
would be for naught. Aubrey, pleasure, and Mrs. Bridgewater would
never occupy the same room at the same time.

“
Yes, sir.”

Oh, God. There could be no doubt about
it. Figgins never lied. Nor could he be mistaken, having known Mrs.
Bridgewater far longer than he’d known Aubrey, since she was Anne’s
father’s sister.

Aubrey allowed his head to bow for a
moment before he straightened and told Figgins, “Please have Mrs.
Granger bring refreshments into the drawing room. Have somebody
fetch Becky and her nanny.” It was difficult for him to say Miss
Prophet’s name aloud. A small groan escaped him when he added,
“I’ll tackle Mrs. Bridgewater as soon as I put my coat
on.”

“
Very good, sir.”

Figgins left the room. It had always
amused Aubrey that Figgins looked as if he were floating, so
smoothly did he move. The man was so dashedly formal. Figgins’s
gait ceased to amuse him today, however. The promise of
encountering Anne’s least favorite aunt could smother anyone’s
enjoyment of life.

Anne Harriott’s parents had been
wonderful people. It stood to reason that it had been so, since
Anne herself had been an angel. Their lives had been cut tragically
short, as had their daughter’s, although their deaths had been
incurred in an accident five years before Anne’s illness had
begun.

And, no matter the reason for this
unusual visit, Aubrey was sure it augured a problem. Mrs.
Bridgewater, Mr. Harriott’s older sister, had missed the angelic
Harriott family leaning entirely. She was an overbearing moose of a
woman, and Aubrey didn’t like her. Worse, neither did Becky. The
poor child was always cowed in Mrs. Bridgewater’s presence. Well,
and why shouldn’t she be? Aubrey was pretty much cowed himself when
faced with the austere and disapproving Mrs. Bridgewater. Anne and
he had started calling her Mrs. Bilgewater in private, although
they never did so in front of Becky, fearing she might believe it
to be the woman’s real name.

He stopped to take a deep breath
before he entered the drawing room. Old Bilgewater, he saw at once,
hadn’t bothered to sit, but stood before the fireplace, staring
with censure through her eyeglasses at the portrait of Anne hanging
above the mantel. Immediately, Aubrey’s ire rose. If the old bat
said one word about that portrait, Aubrey would give her a piece of
his mind that she wouldn’t easily digest.

However, he owed it to Anne’s memory
to be courteous to any of her relations, at least at first, so he
said pleasantly, “Mrs. Bridgewater. What a nice surprise.” An
honest man, Aubrey nonetheless permitted himself the occasional
social lie.

Mrs. Bridgewater turned in a regal
manner—probably due to her corset stays, Aubrey thought bitterly.
Her eyeglasses glittered, giving her an even more forbidding
appearance than she might have had without them. Aubrey had never
seen eyeglasses have that effect on anyone but Aunt Evelyn
Bilgewater.

She appeared to sneer at him. “Oh.
There you are. I think you ought to remove this portrait, Aubrey.
It can’t be good for Rebecca to be reminded of her mother all the
time.”

If human emotion could be registered
in terms of volcanic displays, Aubrey would have erupted. He didn’t
permit his fury to show, but merely said quietly, “Anne’s portrait
is precious to both Becky and me, Mrs. Bridgewater, and I won’t be
removing it any time soon.”

The middle-aged matron snorted. “Well,
you’re a fool then.”

Aubrey didn’t respond to this blatant
attempt to rile him. “Mrs. Granger is bringing us some
refreshments, Mrs. Bridgewater. Won’t you be seated? I’ve sent for
Becky.”

“
I want to talk to you about
Rebecca, Aubrey.” She sat with a crisp crunch of black bombazine.
“That’s why I chose to take the arduous journey to this
end-of-the-world place today.”

She reminded Aubrey a little of
Monster, the way her large body pooched out around the edges.
However, Monster, even when attacking his feet, possessed a better
nature than Bilgewater.

Her words froze his blood. Not that
this human female buffalo could do anything with Becky without his
permission, but Aubrey didn’t fancy getting embroiled in a fight
with her. He said, “Oh?” and smiled benignly. Because he disliked
her and didn’t care for the way she belittled Santa Angelica, he
added, “Anne and I chose to live here in order to get away from the
fuss and bother of the city. We loved it here. We both thought it
would be better to rear children in the country than in the city.
Fresh air, vigorous exercise, and all that.”

She sniffed, “No accounting for taste,
I suppose.”

“
Right.” Suppressing the
urge to throw at old Bilgewater’s head the Ming vase he’d rescued
several days earlier from Monster’s attack, he muttered, “You said
you wanted to talk to me about Becky?”

“
Yes. Something must be done
about her.”

Good God. She sounded as if Becky were
a species of vermin that needed to be exterminated. “What do you
mean, ‘done about her’?”

“
She needs a woman around
her, now that Anne’s gone. She ought not remain out here in the
hinterlands with only her father and the servants for company.
She’ll never learn how to take her place in society this
way.”

Trying not to grind his teeth, Aubrey
said, “You needn’t worry about that, Mrs. Bridgewater. I’ve hired
her a nanny.”

Bilgewater snorted. “A nanny! And what
good, pray tell, is a nanny? The child needs to be with her
family.”

“
It sounds to me as though
you think she ought to be
removed
from her family,” Aubrey pointed out.

“
Nonsense. I only want you
to understand that a girl child needs to associate with female
family members.”

Still holding back a bellow, Aubrey
said,. “She’s quite happy, actually. She’s about to start school in
a couple of days, and she’s excited about it.”

“
School!” Mrs. Bridgewater’s
lips thinned and her nose wrinkled. “And where will she be
attending school?”

Aubrey inclined his head, puzzled at
the question. “Why, in Santa Angelica, of course. She’ll be in the
first grade, and she’s quite looking forward to it.”

“
Fah.”

Fah
? Why
fah
?
Aubrey lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t approve?” He might have
expected as much. Bilgewater didn’t approve of anything unless she
suggested it.

The door of the drawing room opened,
and Becky bounced in, a smile wreathing her darling face, Callie
right behind her. As ever, when in the presence of his child,
Aubrey’s heart first hitched painfully and then gladdened. She
reminded him so much of Anne.

As soon as the child spotted her least
favorite great-aunt, her smile vanished and she stopped bouncing.
Evidently recalling past encounters with this intimidating dame,
she curtsied prettily and stood stock still. She glanced over her
shoulder at Callie. Aubrey could tell she did so in order to gain
courage, and his heart pinged again. She ought to be looking to him
for aid and comfort, not her nanny.

He went over to her and took her hand.
“Come here, sweetheart. Let’s say hello to Great-Aunt
Evelyn.”

His gaze found Callie, who stood with
folded hands beside the doorway. She looked as if she’d just
steamed in from a hard gale, with loose tresses flying out from the
bun on top of her head. As soon as she caught his eye focused on
her head, she unfolded her hands and began patting at her
hair.

Aubrey knew, because he’d studied her
hair, that it wouldn’t be subdued by such feeble efforts. For a
second he allowed his glance to take in the rest of her, and he
realized she had smears of dirt on her apron and even on her right
cheek.

Aunt Evelyn was going to love this. He
gave Callie a quick frown to let her know he wasn’t pleased with
her, and again turned toward Mrs. Bridgewater. “Another curtsy
would be in order here, Becky,” he said softly and with a smile. He
knew Becky was afraid of this woman, and he didn’t fault her for
her astute assessment of human nature. Anyone with an ounce of
sense would be leery of Evelyn Bilgewater.

“
Good morning, Rebecca,”
Mrs. Bridgewater said. She was as formal as Figgins, but not as
good-natured. Even her smile appeared sour.